One May day, when I was visiting my college on a trip to the west coast, three former classmates said that they were headed to the gym for a workout. Would I like to come?
“Why not?”
It’s surprising how many bad ideas begin with that question.
See what they neglected to mention was that it was an aerobics class: Advanced Step.
I had never done aerobics, let alone an advanced class on step aerobics. It was a scene out of the movie—I kept trying to catch up as my brain tried to figure which one of the last moves we did was the “straddle down.”
It’s weird how worlds intersect. Here is some lobbycon dialog:
“I don’t know, but if you plot the points, there aren’t many intersections. I’ve noticed it on my Facebook: The Open Source world has different geeks, and then the Web 2.0 world is mixed up. Priorities are f’d—people like X, who are big in the Web 2.0 world, nobody knows here.”
“Web 2.0 is…not even geeks really.”
“If it were, every party would be like the Ars Technica/Gizmodo WWDC party.”
“Terry is single,” Alex declares to anyone who was interested. (Nobody was.)
Nelson Muntz voice: “Ha ha!” Maybe if you were a Nikon-toting hottie, I’d have given you a straight answer.
Party photography Q&A tree
Now, in my defense, when it comes to that senseless brand war, I have to represent. But I admit that it was a bit harsh, especially since, as an event photographer himself, he must get asked my most-despised geek-party conversation starter an awful lot: “Who are you with?” (i.e. “Who are you shooting for so I know if I should do a posedown.”)
We hates it, my precious, yes we do.
Coincidentally, just that day, I devised a customer support answer tree to turn this question into a lethal conversation-killer:
…then give them that dismissive look, like they just said something incredibly stupid.
It’s interesting how self-context can change a city.
Last time I visited Amsterdam, I was in a terrible relationship, living in South Bay and I got robbed leaving Schiphol. Three years later, I’m single living in San Francisco and am a tiny bit wiser.
